Study of microwave behaviors of cantilever RF MEMS switch

In this paper, RF characterizations of the cantilever MEMS switch have been highlighted. A variety of cantilever MEMS switch designs and their analysis have been performed. Impact of beam thickness and air gap have been utilized in order to achieve high isolation in the Ku band (12–18 GHz) and mutual comparisons of the Al and Au beam structures are analyzed with respect to their performance. RF characterizations of all the structures of cantilever MEMS switch with the Al and Au beam have been carried out by means of Ansoft HFSS v.10, a FEM based simulator for structures operating at a high frequency range.